Google AdSense Sued by Suspended Publisher

Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that a woman has sued Google after she was suspended from the program for clicking on her own ads. Theresa B. Bradley filed a lawsuit against Google for $250,000 for fraud and misrepresentation, even though she admits she clicked her own ads "to verify that the advertisers were not selling competing products".

The site in question is BravaCorp.com, and she claims it took her staff 100 hours for "placing and reviewing HTML code for Google AdSense" on her site which seems to have under a few dozen pages. In addition, Bradley is also claiming her "brief business relationship with Google caused her irreparable harm by damaging her reputation and the reputation of her products and services."

Google responded to Bryant that "the suit is without merit and that the company would defend itself vigorously". However, Bradley did not reply to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Bryant notes that Bradley also sued Yahoo in August, although for unknown reasons at this time.

The full story is at eWeek (including additional information from the author in the comments). My additional thoughts on the case are at JenSense.

Postscript Barry: Steve Bryant from eWeek has learned that she has also claimed that Google deleted all emails related to the AdSense dispute from her Gmail account.

About the author

Jennifer Slegg began as a freelance writer, and turned to search engine optimization and writing content for the web in 1998. She has created numerous content-rich sites in niche markets and works with many clients on content creation, strategy, and monetization. She writes about many search industry and social media topics on her blog, JenniferSlegg.com and is a frequent speaker at search industry conferences on SEO, content marketing and content monetization. Acknowledged as the leading expert on the Google AdSense contextual advertising program, she runs JenSense, a blog dealing exclusively with contextual advertising. She is also the founder and editor of The SEM Post. She is known by many as her handle Jenstar on various webmaster forums.